ILLUSTRATIONS AND ADDITIONS.
[53]. p. 154—“Across that pacific arm of the sea.”
The Atlantic Ocean, between the parallels of 23° south lat. and 70° north lat., has the form of a furrowed longitudinal valley, in which the advancing and receding angles are opposite to each other. I first developed this idea in my work entitled Essai d’un Tableau Géologique de l’Amérique méridionale, which was published in the Journal de Physique, t. liii. p. 61.[[IC]] From the Canary Isles, especially from 21° north lat., and 23° west long., to the north-east coast of South America, the surface of the ocean is so calm, and the waves so gentle, that an open boat might navigate it in safety.
[54]. p. 155—“Fresh springs among the Islands of the Antilles.”
On the southern coast of the island of Cuba, south-west of the harbour of Batabano, in the Gulf of Xagua, at a distance of eight to twelve miles from the shore, springs of fresh water gush from the bed of the ocean, probably from the action of hydrostatic pressure. The jet is propelled with such force that boats use extreme caution in approaching this spot, which is well known for its counter current producing a heavy swell. Trading vessels sailing along the coast, which do not purpose putting into port, sometimes visit these springs, in order to provide themselves, in the midst of the ocean, with a supply of fresh water. The freshness of the water increases with the depth from which it is drawn. River cows (Trichecus manati), which do not generally inhabit salt water, are frequently killed here. This singular phenomenon (the fresh springs), of which no mention had hitherto been made, was most accurately investigated by my friend, Don Francisco Lemaur, who made a trigonometrical survey of the Bahia de Xagua. I did not myself visit Xagua, but remained in the insular group situated further to the south (the so-called Jardines del Rey), to make astronomical determinations of their latitude and longitude.
[55]. p. 155—“Ancient rocky barrier.”
Columbus, whose unwearied spirit of observation was directed on every side, proposes in his letters to the Spanish monarchs, a geognostic hypothesis regarding the configuration of the larger Antilles. Being fully impressed with the idea of the strength of the Equinoctial current, which has often a westerly direction, he ascribes to it the disintegration of the group of the smaller Antilles, and the singularly lengthened configuration of the southern coasts of Porto Rico, Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica, all of which follow almost exactly the direction of parallels of latitude. On his third voyage (from the end of May, 1498, to the end of November, 1500), when, from the Boca del Drago to the Island of Margarita, and afterwards from that island to Haiti, he felt the whole force of the equinoctial current, “that movement of the waters which accords with the movement of the heavens—movimiento de los cielos,” he says expressly that the violence of the current has torn the Island of Trinidad from the mainland. He refers the sovereigns to a chart which he sends them—a “pintura de la tierra,” drawn by himself, to which frequent reference is made in the celebrated lawsuit against Don Diego Colon respecting the rights of the first Admiral. “Es la carta de marear y figura que hizo el Almirante señalando los rumbos y vientos por los quales vino á Paria, que dicen parte del Asia.”[[ID]]
[56]. p. 156—“Across the snow-crowned Paropanisus.”
In Diodorus’ description of the Paropanisus,[[IE]] we seem to recognise a delineation of the Peruvian chain of the Andes. The army passed through inhabited districts in which snow daily fell!
[57]. p. 156—“Herrera in his Decades.”
Historia general de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. i. lib. iii. cap. 12 (ed. 1601, p. 106); Juan Batista Muñoz, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, lib. vi. c. 31, p. 301; Humboldt, Examen Crit., t. iii. p. 111.
[58]. p. 158—“The Sources of the Orinoco have never been visited by any European.”
Thus I wrote respecting these sources in the year 1807, in the first edition of the Ansichten der Natur, and I repeat with equal truth the same statement after an interval of forty-one years. The travels of the brothers Robert and Richard Schomburgk, so important in reference to all departments of natural science and geography, have established other and more interesting facts; but the problem of the situation of the sources of the Orinoco has been only partially solved by Sir Robert Schomburgk. M. Bonpland and myself advanced from the west as far as Esmeralda, or the confluence of the Orinoco with the Guapo; and I was enabled, by the aid of well-attested information, to describe the upper course of the Orinoco to above the mouth of the Gehette, and to the small waterfall (Raudal) de los Guaharibos. From the east Sir Robert Schomburgk, proceeding from the mountains of the Majonkong Indians, the inhabited portion of which he estimated by the boiling point of water to be 3517 feet in height, succeeded in reaching the Orinoco by the Padamo River, which the Majonkongs and Guinaus (Guaynas?) call Paramu.[[IF]] I had placed this confluence of the Padamo with the Orinoco in my Atlas, in 3° 12′ N. lat., and 65° 46′ W. long. but Schomburgk found it by direct observation in 2° 53′ lat. and 65° 48′ W. long. The main object of this traveller’s journey was not ‘natural history,’ but the solution of the prize question proposed by the Royal Geographical Society of London, in November, 1834,—on the connection of the coast of British Guiana with the easternmost point which I had reached on the Upper Orinoco. After undergoing many sufferings, this object was thoroughly achieved. Robert Schomburgk reached Esmeralda, with his instruments, on the 22nd of February, 1839. His determinations of the latitude and longitude of the place agreed more closely with mine than I had anticipated. Let us here allow the observer to speak for himself:—“Words are inadequate to describe the feelings which overwhelmed me when I sprang on shore. My object was attained; my observations, begun on the coast of Guiana, were brought into connection with those of Humboldt at Esmeralda, and I freely admit that at a time when my physical powers had almost entirely deserted me, and when I was surrounded by dangers and difficulties of no ordinary kind, the recognition which I hoped for from him, was the sole inducement which inspired me with a fixed determination to press forward towards the goal which I had now reached. The emaciated figures of my Indian companions and my faithful guides proclaimed more fully than any words could do, what difficulties we had had to surmount, and had surmounted.” After citing expressions so gratifying, I must be permitted to subjoin the opinions I expressed regarding this great undertaking promoted by the Royal Geographical Society of London, in my Preface to the German edition of Robert Schomburgk’s Account of his Travels, published in 1841. “Immediately after my return from Mexico, I indicated the direction and the routes by which the unknown portion of the South American Continent between the sources of the Orinoco, the mountain chain of Pacaraima, and the sea-shore near Essequibo, might be explored. These wishes, so strongly expressed in the personal narrative of my journey, have at length, after the lapse of nearly half a century, been for the most part fulfilled. I rejoice that I have been spared to see so important an enlargement of our geographical knowledge; I rejoice too in seeing a courageous and well-conducted enterprise, requiring the most devoted perseverance, executed by a young man, to whom I feel bound no less by the ties of similarity of pursuits than those of country. These circumstances were alone able to overcome the aversion and disinclination which I entertain, perhaps unjustly, for introductory prefaces by a different hand than that of the author himself. But I could not resist the impulse of expressing thus publicly my sincere esteem for the accomplished traveller who, led on by the meritorious idea of penetrating from east to west, from the Valley of the Essequibo to Esmeralda, has succeeded, after five years of efforts and of sufferings (the extent of which I well appreciate from my own experience), in attaining the object of his ambition. Courage for the sudden accomplishment of a hazardous undertaking is easier to find, and implies less inward strength, than the resolution to endure with resignation long-continued physical sufferings, excited by absorbing mental interest; and still to press forward, undismayed by the certainty of having to retrace his steps under equally great privations and with enfeebled powers. Serenity of mind, which is almost the first requisite for an enterprise in inhospitable regions, a passionate love for any department of scientific labour (be it natural history, astronomy, hypsometrics, or magnetism), a pure feeling for the enjoyment which nature is capable of imparting, are elements which, when they combine together in one individual, ensure valuable results from a great and important journey.”
I will preface my consideration of the question of the sources of the Orinoco with my own conjectures in relation to the subject. The perilous route travelled in 1739 by the surgeon Nicolas Hortsmann, of Hildesheim; in 1775 by the Spaniard Don Antonio Santos, and his friend Nicolas Rodriguez; in 1793 by the Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st Regiment of the Line of Para, Don Francisco José Rodriguez Barata; and (according to manuscript maps, for which I am indebted to the former Portuguese Ambassador in Paris, Chevalier de Brito) by several English and Dutch settlers, who in 1811 travelled from Surinam to Para by the portage of the Rupunuri and by the Rio Branco;—divides the terra incognita of the Parime into two unequal parts, and serves to mark the position of a very important point in the geography of those regions—viz., the sources of the Orinoco, which it is no longer possible to remove to an indefinite distance towards the east, without intersecting the bed of the Rio Branco, which flows from north to south through the fluvial district of the Upper Orinoco; while this portion of the great river itself pursues for the most part a direction from east to west. The Brazilians, since the beginning of the present century, have from political motives manifested a vivid interest in the extensive plains east of the Rio Branco.[[IG]] Owing to the position of Santa Rosa on the Uraricapara, whose course appears to have been pretty accurately determined by Portuguese engineers, the sources of the Orinoco cannot be situated east of the meridian of 63° 8′ west long. This is the eastern limit beyond which they cannot be placed, and taking into consideration the state of the river at the Raudal de los Guaharibos (above Caño Chiguire, in the country of the strikingly fair-skinned Guaycas Indians, and 52′ east of the great Cerro Duida), it appears to me probable that the Orinoco in its upper part does not extend, at the utmost, beyond the meridian of 64° 8′ west long. This point is, according to my combinations, 4° 12′ west of the little lake of Amucu, which was reached by Sir Robert Schomburgk.
I will now detail the conjectures of that traveller, after having first given my own earlier ones. According to him the course of the Upper Orinoco, to the east of Esmeralda, is directed from south-east to north-west; my estimations of latitude for the mouths of the Padamo and the Gehette appear to be respectively 19′ and 36′ too small. Schomburgk conjectures that the sources of the Orinoco are situated in lat. 2° 30′, and the fine “Map of Guayana, to illustrate the route of R. H. Schomburgk,” which accompanies the splendid English work entitled Views in the Interior of Guiana, places its geographical sources in 64° 56′ west long., i.e., 1° 6′ west of Esmeralda, and only 48′ of longitude nearer to the Atlantic than I had determined the position of this point. Astronomical combinations led Schomburgk to place the mountain of Maravaca, which is about ten thousand feet high, in 3° 41′ lat. and 65° 48′ west long. The Orinoco was scarcely three hundred yards wide near the mouth of the Padamo or Paramu, and more to the west, where it expands to a width of from four to six hundred yards, it was so shallow, and so full of sandbanks, that the expedition was obliged to dig channels, as the river bed was only fifteen inches deep. Fresh-water dolphins were still to be seen in great numbers everywhere—a phenomenon which the zoologists of the eighteenth century would not have expected to find in the Orinoco and the Ganges.
[59]. p. 158—“The most luxurious product of a tropical climate.”
The Bertholletia excelsa (Juvia), of the family of Myrtaceæ (and placed in Richard Schomburgk’s proposed division of Lecythideæ), was first described in Plantes Equinoxiales, t. i. 1808, p. 122, tab. 36. This colossal and magnificent tree offers, in the perfect development of its cocoa-like, round, close-grained, woody fruit, inclosing the three-cornered and also woody seed-vessels, the most remarkable example of luxuriant organic development. The Bertholletia grows in the forests of the Upper Orinoco, between the Padamo and the Ocamu, in the vicinity of the mountain of Mapaya, as well as between the rivers Amaguaca and Gehette.[[IH]]
[60]. p. 158—“Grass stalks, whose joints measure upwards of eighteen feet from knot to knot.”
Robert Schomburgk, when visiting the small mountainous country of the Majonkongs, on his route to Esmeralda, was fortunate enough to determine the species of Arundinaria, which furnishes the material for these blowing-tubes. He says of this plant: “It grows in large tufts, like the bambusa; the first joint rises, in the old cane, without a knot, to a height of from 16 to 17 feet before it begins to bear leaves. The entire height of the Arundinaria, growing at the foot of the great mountain-cluster of Maravaca, is from 30 to 40 feet, with a thickness of scarcely half an inch in diameter. The top is always inclined; and this species of grass is peculiar to the sandstone mountains between the Ventuari, the Paramu (Padamo), and the Mavaca. The Indian name is Curata, and, therefore, from the excellence of these celebrated long blowing-tubes, the Majonkongs and Guinaus of these districts have acquired the name of the Curata nation.”[[II]]
[61]. p. 159—“Fabulous origin of the Orinoco from a lake.”
The lakes of these regions (some of which are wholly imaginary, while the real size of others has been much exaggerated by theoretical geographers) may be divided into two groups. The first of these groups comprise those situate between Esmeralda (the most easterly mission on the Upper Orinoco), and the Rio Branco; to the second, belong the lakes presumed to exist in the district between the Rio Branco and French, Dutch, and British Guiana. This general view, of which travellers should never lose sight, proves that the question of whether there is another Lake Parime eastward of the Rio Branco, besides the Lake Amucu, seen by Hortsmann, Santos, Colonel Barata, and Schomburgk, has nothing whatever to do with the problem of the sources of the Orinoco. As the name of my distinguished friend the former Director of the Hydrographic Office at Madrid, Don Felipe Bauza, is of great weight in questions of geography, the impartiality which ought to influence every scientific investigation makes it incumbent on me to mention that this learned man was inclined to the view that there must be lakes west of the Rio Branco, at no great distance from the sources of the Orinoco. He wrote to me from London shortly before his death, “I wish you were here that I might converse with you respecting the geography of the Upper Orinoco, which has occupied you so much. I have been fortunate enough to rescue from entire destruction the papers of the General of Marine, Don José Solano, father of the Solano who perished in so melancholy a manner at Cadiz. These documents relate to the settlement of the boundary line between the Spaniards and Portuguese, with which Solano had been charged since 1754, in conjunction with the Escadre Chef Yturriaga and Don Vicente Doz. In all these plans and sketches I find a Laguna Parime sometimes as a source of the Orinoco, and sometimes as wholly detached from it. Are we then to assume that there is another lake further eastward to the north-east of Esmeralda?”
Löffling, the celebrated pupil of Linnæus, accompanied the last-named expedition to Cumana in the capacity of botanist. He died on the 22nd of February, 1756, at the mission of Santa Eulalia de Murucuri (somewhat to the south of the confluence of the Orinoco and Caroni), after traversing the missions on the Piritu and Caroni. The documents of which Bauza speaks are the same as those on which the great map of De la Cruz Olmedilla is based. They have served as the foundation of all the maps of South America, which appeared in England, France, and Germany, before the end of the last century; and have also served for the two maps executed in 1756 by Father Caulin, the historiographer of Solano’s expedition, and by M. de Surville, Keeper of the Archives in the Secretary of State’s Office at Madrid, who was but an unskilful compiler. The contradictions abounding in these maps show the little reliance that can be placed on the results of this expedition. Nay more, Father Caulin, above referred to, acutely details the circumstances which gave rise to this fable of the lake of Parime; and the map of Surville, which accompanies his work, not only restores this lake, under the name of the White Lake, and the Mar Dorado, but indicates another smaller one, from which flow partly by means of collateral branches, the Orinoco, Siapa, and Ocamo. I was able to convince myself on the spot of the following facts well known in the missions; that Don José Solano did not do more than cross the cataracts of Atures and Maypures; that he did not reach the confluence of the Guaviare and the Orinoco in 4° 3′ north lat., and 68° 9′ west long.; and that the astronomical instruments of the boundary expedition were neither carried to the isthmus of the Pimichin and the Rio Negro, nor to the Cassiquiare; and even on the Upper Orinoco, not beyond the mouth of the Atabapo. This vast extent of territory was not made the scene of any accurate observations before my journey, and has subsequently to Solano’s expedition been traversed only by some few soldiers who had been sent on exploring expeditions; while Don Apolinario de Fuente, whose journal I obtained from the archives of the province of Quixos, has gathered without discrimination everything from the fallacious narratives of the Indians that could flatter the credulity of the Governor Centurion. No member of the expedition had seen a lake, and Don Apolinario was unable to advance beyond the Cerro Yumarique and Gehette.
Although a line of separation, formed by the basin of the Rio Branco, is now established throughout the whole extent of the country, to which we are desirous of directing the inquiring zeal of travellers, it must yet be admitted, that our geographical knowledge of the district west of this valley between 62° and 66° long., has made no advance whatever for at least a century. The repeated attempts made by the Government of Spanish Guiana since the expeditions of Iturria and Solano, to reach and to pass over the Pacaraima Mountains, have been attended by very unimportant results. When the Spaniards, in proceeding to the missions of the Catalonian capuchins of Barceloneta, at the confluence of the Caroni and the Rio Paragua, ascended the last-named river southward to its junction with the Paraguamusi, they founded at this point the mission of Guirion, which, at first, bore the pompous appellation of Ciudad de Guirion. I place it in about 4° 30′ north latitude. From thence the Governor Centurion, in consequence of the exaggerated accounts given by two Indian chiefs, Paranacare and Arimuicapi, respecting the powerful tribe of the Ipurucotos, was excited to search for ‘El Dorado,’ and in carrying what were then called spiritual conquests still further, founded, beyond the Pacaraima Mountains, the two villages of Santa Rosa and San Bautista de Caudacacla. The former was situate on the upper eastern bank of the Uraricapara, a tributary of the Uraricuera, which I find in the journal of Rodriguez under the name of the Rio Curaricara; the latter, at from 24 to 28 miles further east-south-east. The astronomo-geographer of the Portuguese Boundary Commission, Captain Don Antonio Pires de Sylva Pontes Leme, and the Captain of Engineers, Don Ricardo Franco d’Almeida de Serra, who between 1787 and 1804, surveyed with the greatest care the whole course of the Rio Branco and its upper tributaries, call the most western part of the Uraricapara, “The Valley of Inundation.” They place the Spanish mission of Santa Rosa in 3° 46′ north lat., and mark the route that leads from thence northward across the mountain chain to the Caño Anocapra, a branch of the Paraguamusi, which forms a connecting passage between the basin of the Rio Branco and that of the Caroni. Two maps of these Portuguese officers, embracing all the details of the trigonometrical survey of the bends of the Rio Branco, the Uraricuera, the Tacutu, and the Mahu, were most kindly communicated to Colonel Lapie and myself by the Count of Linhares. These valuable unpublished documents, of which I have availed myself, are still in the hands of the learned geographer, who long since began to have them engraved at his own expense. The Portuguese sometimes call the whole of the Rio Branco by the name of Rio Parime, and sometimes limit this appellation to one branch only, the Uraricuera, somewhat below the Caño Mayari and above the old mission of San Antonio. As the words Paragua and Parime alike imply water, great water, lake, and sea, we cannot wonder at finding them so often repeated among tribes living at great distances from each other; as, for instance, by the Omaguas on the Upper Marañon, by the Western Guaranis, and by the Caribs. In all parts of the world, as I have already remarked, large rivers are called by those who live on their banks “the River,” without any specific denomination. Paragua, the name of a branch of the Caroni, is also the term applied by the natives to the Upper Orinoco. The name Orinucu is Tamanakish; and Diego de Ordaz first heard it used in the year 1531, when he ascended to the mouth of the Meta. Besides the Valley of Inundation above mentioned we find other large pieces of water between the Rio Xumuru and the Parime. One of these bays is a branch of the Tacutu, and the other of the Uraricuera. Even at the base of the Pacaraima Mountains the rivers are subject to great periodical overflowings; and the Lake Amucu, of which we shall subsequently speak more fully, exhibits exactly the same character at the commencement of the plains. The Spanish missions, Santa Rosa and San Bautista de Caudacacla, or Cayacaya, founded in the years 1770 and 1773, by the Governor Don Manuel Centurion, were destroy ed before the close of the last century; and since that time, no new attempt has been made to advance from the basin of the Caroni to the southern declivity of the Pacaraima Mountains.
The territory east of the valley of the Rio Branco has of late years been made the subject of several successful explorations. Mr. Hillhouse navigated the Massaruni as far as the Bay of Caranang, whence, as he says, a path would lead the traveller, in two days, to the source of the Massaruni; and, in three days, to the tributaries of the Rio Branco. With respect to the windings of the great river Massaruni, described by Mr. Hillhouse, he himself observes, in a letter addressed to me from Demerara, 1st January, 1831, that “the Massaruni, reckoning from its sources, flows first to the west, then for one degree of latitude to the north; afterwards nearly 200 miles eastward; and, finally, to the north and north-north-east till it merges in the Essequibo.” As Mr. Hillhouse was unable to reach the southern declivity of the Pacaraima chain, he was not acquainted with the Amucu Lake; and he says himself, in his printed report, that “from the accounts given him by the Accaouais, who are continually traversing the country between the shore and the Amazon River, he is convinced there is no lake in this district.” This assertion occasioned me some surprise, as it was directly opposed to the views I had previously formed regarding the Lake Amucu, from which flows the Caño Pirara, according to the accounts given by the travellers Hortsmann, Santos, and Rodriguez (and which had inspired me with the more confidence, because they entirely coincide with the recent Portuguese manuscript charts). Finally, after five years of expectation, Schomburgk’s journey has removed all farther doubt.
“It is difficult to believe,” says Mr. Hillhouse, in his interesting memoir on the Massaruni, “that the tradition of a large inland sea is wholly unfounded. According to my views, the following circumstance may have given rise to the belief in the existence of the fabulous lake of the Parime. At some distance from the rocky fall of Teboco the waters of the Massaruni present to the eye as little motion as the calm surface of a lake. If at a more or less remote period the horizontal granitic strata of Teboco had been totally compact and without fissures, the waters must have been at least 50 feet above their present level, and there would have been formed an immense lake 10 or 12 miles in width, and 1500 or 2000 miles in length.”[[IJ]] The extent of this supposed inundation is not the only reason which prevents me from acceding to this explanation; for I have seen plains (Llanos), where, during the rainy season, the overflowing of the tributaries of the Orinoco annually covered a surface of 6400 square miles. The labyrinth of ramifications between the Apure, Arauca, Capanaparo, and Sinaruco (see maps 17 and 18 of my Physical Atlas), is then wholly lost sight of; the configuration of the river beds can no longer be traced, and the whole appears like one vast lake. But the locality of the fabulous Dorado, and of the Lake Parime, belongs historically to quite a different part of Guiana, namely, that lying south of the Pacaraima mountains. This myth of the White Sea and of the Dorado of the Parime, has arisen, as I endeavoured thirty years ago to show in another work, from the appearance of the micaceous rocks of the Ucucuamo, the name Rio Parime (Rio Branco), the inundations of the tributaries; and especially from the existence of the lake Amucu, which is in the neighbourhood of the Rio Rupunuwini (Rupunuri), and is connected by means of the Pirara with the Rio Parime.
I have had much pleasure in finding that the travels of Sir Robert Schomburgk have fully corroborated these early views. The section of his map which gives the course of the Essequibo and of the Rupunuri is quite new, and of great importance in a geographical point of view. It places the Pacaraima chain between 3° 52′and 4° north lat., while I had given its mean direction from 4° to 4° 10′. The chain reaches the confluence of the Essequibo and Rupunuri in 3° 57′ north lat., and 58° 1′ west longitude; I had placed it half a degree too far to the north. Schomburgk calls the last-named river Rupununi, according to the pronunciation of the Macusis; and gives as the synonymes Rupunuri, Rupunuwini and Opununy, which have arisen from the difficulty the Carib tribes of these districts find in pronouncing the letter “r.” The position of the lake Amucu and its relations to the Mahu (Maou) and Tacutu (Tacoto) correspond perfectly with my map of Colombia drawn in 1825. We agree equally well regarding the latitude of the lake of Amucu, for while he places it in 3° 33′, I considered it to be in 3° 35′; the Caño Pirara (Pirarara) which connects the Amucu with the Rio Branco, flows from it towards the north, and not to the west as I had marked it. The Sibarana of my map, the sources of which Hortsmann placed to the north of the Cerro Ucucuamo near a fine mine of rock crystal, is the Siparuni of Schomburgk’s map. His Waa-Ekuru is the Tavaricaru of the Portuguese geographer Pontes Leme, and is the branch of the Rupunuri which lies the nearest to the lake of Amucu.
The following remarks from the report of Sir Robert Schomburgk throw some light on the subject in question. “The lake of Amucu,” says this traveller, “is without doubt the nucleus of the Lake of Parime and of the supposed White Sea. In December and January, when we visited it, it was scarcely a mile in length, and was half covered with reeds.” The same observation occurs on D’Anville’s map of 1748. “The Pirara flows from the lake to the W.N.W. of the Indian village of Pirara and falls into the Maou or Mahu. The last-named river rises, according to the information given me, north of the ridge of the Pacaraima mountains, which in their eastern portion do not attain a greater elevation than about 1600 feet. The sources of the river are on a plateau, from whence it is precipitated in a beautiful waterfall, known as the Corona. We were on the point of visiting this fall, when on the third day of our excursion to the mountains, the indisposition of one of my companions compelled me to return to the station at the lake Amucu. The Mahu has black coffee-coloured water, and its current is more impetuous than that of the Rupunuri. In the mountains through which it pursues its course it is about 60 yards in breadth. Its environs are here extremely picturesque. This valley as well as the bank of the Buroburo, which flows into the Siparuni, are inhabited by the Macusis. In April the whole Savannahs are overflowed, and then present the peculiar phenomenon of the waters belonging to two different river basins commingling together. It is probable that the vast extent of this temporary inundation may have given rise to the fable of the lake of Parime. During the rainy season a water communication is formed in the interior of the country between the Essequibo, the Rio Branco, and the Gran Para. Some groups of trees, rising like Oases on the sand-hills of the Savannahs, present, at the time of the inundation, the appearance of islands scattered over a lake; and these are without doubt the Ipomucena islands of Don Antonio Santos.”
In D’Anville’s manuscripts, which his heirs kindly allowed me to examine, I find that Hortsmann of Hildesheim, who described these districts with great care, saw a second Alpine lake, which he places two day’s journey above the confluence of the Mahu with the Rio Parime (Tacutu?). It is a black water lake, situated on the summit of a mountain. He explicitly distinguishes it from the lake of Amucu, which he describes as “covered with rushes.” The descriptions given by Hortsmann and Santos coincide with the Portuguese manuscript maps of the Marine Bureau at Rio Janeiro, in not indicating the existence of an uninterrupted connection between the Rupunuri and the lake of Amucu. In D’Anville’s maps of South America, the rivers are better drawn in the first edition published in 1748, than in the more extensively circulated one of 1760. Schomburgk’s travels fully confirm the independence of the basin of the Rupunuri and Essequibo; but he draws attention to the fact that, during the rainy season, the Rio Waa-Ekuru, a tributary of the Rupunuri, is in connection with the Caño Pirara. Such is the condition of these river-channels, which are still but little developed, and almost entirely without separating ridges.
The Rupunuri and the village of Anai, 3° 56′ north latitude, 58° 34′ west longitude, are at present recognised as the political boundaries between the British and Brazilian domains in these desert regions. Sir Robert Schomburgk was compelled by severe illness to make a protracted stay at Anai. He bases his chronometrical determinations of the position of the lake of Amucu on the mean of many lunar distances, east and west, which he measured during his sojourn at Anai. His determinations of longitude for these points of the Parime are in general one degree more east than those in my map of Colombia. While I am far from calling in question the result of these lunar observations taken at Anai, I may be allowed to observe that the calculation of these distances is of importance, when it is desired to carry the comparison from the lake of Amucu to Esmeralda, which I found in 66° 19′ west longitude.
Thus then we see the great Mar de la Parima, (which it was so difficult to remove from our maps, that even after my return from America it was still supposed to be 160 miles in length,) reduced by recent investigations to the lake of Amucu, measuring only two or three miles in circumference. The illusions entertained for nearly two hundred years, and which in the last Spanish expedition, in 1775, for the discovery of El Dorado, cost several hundred lives, have finally terminated by enriching geography with some few results. In the year 1512 thousands of soldiers perished in the expedition, undertaken by Ponce de Leon, to discover the “Fountain of Youth,” on one of the Bahama Islands, called Binimi, which is hardly to be found on any of our maps. This expedition led to the conquest of Florida, and to the knowledge of the great oceanic current, or gulf-stream, which flows through the Straights of Bahama. The thirst after gold, and the desire of rejuvenescence—the Dorado and the Fountain of Youth—stimulated, to an almost equal extent, the passions of mankind.
[62]. p. 161—“The Piriguao, one of the noblest forms of the Palm.”
Compare Humboldt, Bonpland, and Kunth, Nova Genera Plantarum, and Plant. æquinoct., t. i. p. 315.
[63]. p. 171—“The grave of an extinct race.”
During my stay in the forests of the Orinoco, researches were being made, by royal command, in reference to these bone-caves. The missionary of the cataracts had been falsely accused of having discovered in these caves treasures which the Jesuits had concealed there prior to their flight.
[64]. p. 172—“When his language perished with him.”
The parrot of the Atures has been made the subject of a charming poem by my friend Professor Ernst Curtius, the tutor of the promising young Prince Friedrick Wilhelm of Prussia. The author will forgive me for closing the present section of the “Views of Nature” with this poem, which was not designed for publication, and was communicated to me by letter.